Home > Blog > Russian Legal Translations and Chinese Legal Translations Help Navigate the International Waters of Digital Piracy

Transnational civil litigation and transnational criminal prosecution create a boon for legal translation industry. Since most piracy occurs on US copyrighted materials showing in foreign countries – particularly the Russian, Eastern Europe and Chinese markets- that problem generates an ongoing need for professional English-Russian and Russian-English translation services; for professional English-Chinese and Chinese-English translation services; and professional translation services from and into the Slavic and East European languages.

In response to the increase in movie piracy, the US government has enacted several different laws. In 1997 the No Electronic Theft Act was passed to target illegal electronic file sharing. 1998 saw the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it a felony to try to circumvent or to manufacture, offer or seek to provide devices that would circumvent DRM (Digital Rights Management) tools on copyrighted materials. In 2005, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was passed, making illegal camcording in the movie theater a federal felony.

To help battle piracy on foreign shores, the US has lobbied for the development of international law. For example, the WIPO Copyright Treaty calls on member nations of the WTO to provide adequate protection for DRM measures and effective legal remedies to enforce them. In the European Union, the Copyright Directive was passed, requiring its member nations to offer sufficient legal protections of DRM and to enforce appropriate anti-circumvention remedies.

However, many nations have a cultural disagreement with these perceived Western laws on on copyright infringement. In China, for example, one cannot be prosecuted for piracy unless one is in possession of five hundred or more pirated materials. In other words, to enforce copyright laws in foreign nations, one has to navigate through international laws, foreign laws and local laws. To succeed, foreign language translations – to both discover what legal grounds to assert, and, depending on these findings, to file a lawsuit with certified Russian and Chinese translations of litigation exhibits- are essential. Contact our expert legal translation and court interpreting center in Denver, CO, for all your Russian, Chinese, and other foreign language translation and interpetation needs.